House arrest for impaired driver

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This article was published 26/08/2023 (952 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A judge decided to impose a longer sentence than the Crown recommended for an intoxicated man who drove a vehicle with kids in the backseat into the ditch.

David Pratt, 40, previously pleaded guilty to impaired operation of a motor vehicle and was sentenced in provincial court Thursday afternoon. The crash occurred in 2021 on Road 63 North in Riverdale. Three children and Pratt’s partner at the time were in the vehicle.

Crown attorney Caroline Lacey asked the court to sentence Pratt to three months of house arrest and a two-year driving prohibition.

Facts of the crash were not read in court, but a pre-sentence report and a police report filed during the proceedings provided details about the incident.

On June 15, 2021, Pratt and his partner at the time were driving to visit family in Sioux Valley Dakota Nation with three children in the car.

Once they arrived at Pratt’s father’s place, Pratt had two shots of alcohol with his father before an argument broke out between Pratt’s partner and his father. The argument became so heated that Pratt and his partner ended up leaving and drove off.

According to Pratt, he did not remember turning the wheel of the car abruptly enough to cause it to roll over. He said he was driving about 65 to 70 kilometres per hour before the rollover.

Pratt, who was trapped in the driver’s seat, said that he was in so much pain after the crash that he grabbed a bottle of spirits from the back of the car and began to drink heavily.

His partner at the time did not provide a formal statement, but did speak with Rivers police at the time of the accident. According to the police report, the woman said that Pratt was her common-law spouse and that he had been trying to show the kids how fast the car could go when he lost control and sent the vehicle rolling and ultimately landing in the ditch.

She said that Pratt had been drinking in Brandon at the Travelodge before they got in the car to drive to Sioux Valley.

Police say that they found an open bottle of vodka behind the driver’s seat. Pratt was found to have a blood alcohol concentration almost triple the legal limit. He was also trapped in the driver’s seat and had to be extracted from the car by firefighters.

As a result of the crash, Pratt seriously injured his arm, which required multiple surgeries and ongoing physiotherapy.

Lacey said that the Crown’s position takes into account Pratt’s guilty plea, as there were no witnesses to the accident and his partner did not provide a formal statement to police. This is also Pratt’s first driving offence. However, the Crown attorney said that there were numerous circumstances about this crash that made the DUI much more serious.

“Mr. Pratt is lucky that no one else was hurt — his family, his wife, his kids, or another innocent civilian who could have been driving on the road that day,” Lacey said. “He put himself and his family, quite frankly, in great danger driving the way he was.”

Pratt’s defence lawyer, Anthony Dawson, told the court about Pratt’s difficult life growing up and his struggles with addiction.

“It’s a case where many people will take alcohol or perhaps other drugs to try and numb the pain of the horrible things that they’ve gone through in the past or things that they’re currently going through,” Dawson said.

The defence lawyer said that his client has insight into his addiction and is waiting to start a program with Addictions Foundation of Manitoba.

Pratt told the court that the woman he was with in the crash was not his wife or common-law partner — rather, they had only been together for a short time. He said that he doesn’t know if the injury to his arm will ever heal.

Judge John Combs raised concerns with Pratt’s dedication to addressing his addiction issues as well as his remorse about the crash.

The judge emphasized that drinking and driving is a serious charge and that had Pratt not been drinking alcohol, he likely would not have lost control of the car.

“We need to make sure that when this happens to people, they at least regret their actions, and they vow to never get behind the wheel again when they’ve been consuming alcohol,” Combs said. “And they don’t start blaming other factors for what happened.”

Ultimately, the judge sentenced Pratt to six months of house arrest at his home in Brandon. As part of the sentence, he is required to abstain from alcohol and will be prohibited from driving for two years.

» gmortfield@brandonsun.com

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